Seasons of Rest Part 4
by Cameron Dial
Summary: Post "To BeNot to Be," Methos heads out to bring MacLeod back to Paris.


**_Seasons of Rest_**

**_Part Four_**

**_by_****_ Cameron Dial_**

Disclaimer: "Highlander" and its associated names, trademarks and characters are the property

of Davis/Panzer Productions, Inc., which reserves all copyrights. This story is

for entertainment purposes only. No monetary compensation is received by the author.

No copyright infringement is intended.

I know it's their sandbox. I just dropped by to play.

  


**Chapter Thirty-three**

**October 1999**

  
  


"He doesn't call, he doesn't write. And then when I do hear from him, it's because he's just been accused in a double homicide. I ask you, is this any way to maintain a relationship?"   
  


There'd been no way to sneak up on him, of course. By the time the uniformed police officers escorted her into the prisoner interrogation room he'd had time to choose the expression he wanted to wear and to compose his face--assuming he needed time, that is, which she doubted. Still, you never knew with Adam.   
  


"Hello, Gina."   
  


"It's Paige," she corrected him cooly. "Paige Wexler. You seemed to know it well enough when you contacted my offices. And since I just flew in from London to see if I could save your ass, I damn well think you could try to remember it for once."   
  


"Right," he said. "Paige." He wasn't quite smiling, but it was close.   
  


"So. Did you do it?" she asked.   
  


He quirked an eyebrow at her. "I thought defense attorneys weren't supposed to ask that."   
  


"That's in the movies, Adam. Personally, I'd rather have all the cards out on the table. Tell me about Bartolo."   
  


He lifted his shoulders eloquently, even casually--quite a task, considering casual was hard to do while wearing manacles secured to the top of a metal table. "He issued a challenge and he lost."   
  


"You're telling me you accepted a challenge?"   
  


"I do occasionally."   
  


"Since when?"   
  


"Admittedly it's a new trend," he said, "but I've taken on a few in the last four or five years."   
  


"So . . . that's what?" she said consideringly. "Three or four in a little over two hundred years? I guess the odds are in your favor that way at least, unless--how rusty are you these days?"   
  


"You know, you always did have a smart mouth."   
  


"That's funny," she said. "I thought it was what attracted you to me."   
  


He smiled, neither denying it nor confirming it.   
  


"And the girl?"   
  


Ernesta Vincente. In a way, she even reminded him of Gina--Paige--now that he saw her again. The main difference, of course, was that Ernesta had wrongly believed herself to be an Immortal. Gina, on the other hand, had spent the better part of two decades damning him to hell as if her immortality were his own personal fault.   
  


He shook his head, and his mouth had lost that odd little quirk he'd always worn when he'd teased her as a child. "An accident," he said, still doing casual.   
  


"Liar," she said. "You can tell me, you know. Lawyer-client confidentiality and all that."   
  


There was obviously nothing forthcoming, so she stood there, looking at him for a moment, and then sighed. "Okay. Here's what they've got on you: One Juan Bartolo was found beheaded in a warehouse still under construction on Malopeso Street. Ernesta Vincente, age 24, was found not far from Bartolo, with a single deep sword wound; she died from internal injuries and loss of blood. The angle of entry indicates the wound was self inflicted."   
  


"She thought she was Immortal."   
  


"Hmm. Well, I guess she was wrong then, wasn't she?" When he said nothing, she continued. "She had a tattoo on one wrist, by the way. The police have been unable to trace it to any particular source or organization."   
  


Imagine that.   
  


"You know, Adam, sometimes you make the Sphinx seem downright talkative." Again with the shrug. You'd think she'd have learned. "A glove was found under Bartolo's body," she said. "I don't suppose you happened to notice you were missing one."   
  


Well, that explained the self-satisfied looks he'd been getting from the guards in the last week. 

"You really have to learn to focus," Methos had hissed into Bartolo's ear.   
  


Bartolo had reached, grasping at anything that might save him, and snagged the open edge of Methos' coat pocket. Methos had spun, sword at shoulder height, and connected on the backstroke; the coat pocket gave way at the seam with a tiny tearing sound, lost in the grunt of surprise and protest that Bartolo's open mouth produced on his last gasp of air as his head came away from his body. Unnoticed at that moment, one of Methos' black suede gloves fell from his pocket to the ground, concealed as Bartolo's body fell forward onto it.

No, he hadn't noticed. The weather had been warn enough since then that he hadn't bothered with gloves, or even thought about them. Abruptly, Methos laughed out loud. A thing like that could get a man killed. "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," he said, and Gina turned a venomous look on him. In fact, it could only be a look she'd learned from him, and that made it even funnier.   
  


"You know, Adam," she said, "you really are a sick bastard."   
  


Yeah, well. There was always that.   


**Chapter Thirty-four**

**October 1999**

How fleet is a glance of the mind!

Compared with the speed of its flight, the tempest itself lags behind . . .

--Alexander Selkirk

A week out from Floreana Island MacLeod awoke to full daylight. There had been a scraping sound and, remembering the floating redwood, he'd been unable to convince himself it was purely something left over from his dream, which had already flown from memory. Peering over both port and starboard, though, he saw nothing except an occasional shark's fluke in the distance--something you expected in these waters. He'd heard, of course, of sharks and other large sea animals scratching themselves along the undersides of boats, and supposed that could be what he'd heard. He frowned. Absolution's planking was a mere inch thick, so he'd just as soon not think of a shark using the boat as a scratching post, thank you very much, especially given all the work he'd just put into making her ship shape. After a few minutes, though he was distracted by the mild southerly breeze coming over the railing at him. It was, he had to admit, good to be at sea again and on his way. By nine a.m., however, the wind had palled, and he found himself sitting in still, sticky air, with the main sail doing little more than snapping discontentedly against the mast. There was, unquestionably, a wind somewhere to the north for all the good it was doing him, but given the other symptoms of the weather he knew well enough what it meant.   
  


His suspicions were confirmed toward noon, by which time the sea had turned to great, glassy swells rolling in out of the north. Each set of waves crowded in upon the other, lifting Absolution high in the water and setting her down nose-first for a salt water bath. The boom pounded where it had been lashed, blocks creaking and rattling in turn; below deck, hanging galley utensils banged and clattered together, and topside the sky had turned a deep, dark gray. By noon the sky was very nearly black, and Absolution was sitting in a still swelter of close, heavy air. The swells beneath her decks had increased, though, and were gathering speed. MacLeod hauled in everything but the stay sail and securer the boom to its crutch. As he clinched down the halyards, he was fully convinced he was in for a hurricane.   
  


He cleared the decks and then went below to stash everything he could, lashing everything tight and packing his lockers tightly enough to minimize anything rolling into something else and being broken. He'd rigged a set of woven canvas straps to the galley table to keep his emergency radio gear from crashing to the floor in rough seas; in need, the flip of a switch would send out an automatic and repeating SOS signal complete with his last known heading. Assuming, that is, that a signal could be picked up through a hurricane's winds. What was it he'd read? Hurricane Andrew had been clocked at something over 160 miles per hour off the Florida coast before it turned the instrumentation designed to clock it into a pile of twisted metal. Someone had said the sound was like being under a freight train as it passed through.   
  


A number of short lines dangled from the edge of his bunk, too, though he hoped they wouldn't be needed; if necessary, they could be attached to D-rings screwed into the bulkhead so he could lash himself down and simply ride out the storm, more cargo than captain. There was also a bright orange life jacket that he'd pulled out of storage and tossed somewhat negligently on his bunk. As an Immortal he had little fear of drowning--that is, he knew he might drown at sea, but he knew that the effects weren't permanent and so had little real fear for him. Of course, the idea of being nibbled on by one of the sharks he'd seen that morning had little appeal. . . . After a moment's hesitation, he rolled his katana in his spare clothes and wrapped tape around the whole thing for security, stashing it in the overhead cabinet that had done duty as a bookshelf throughout the voyage. The last thing he did was to latch the cabinet tight and line a dozen books up in front of the katana as protection against chipping or damaging the blade.   
  


On deck again, he stood staring at the sky, the increasing winds strong enough now to whip tears from his eyes. He searched the horizon for any sign of what was to come and realized all he could do now was wait.   


**Chapter Thirty-five**

**October 1999**

Predictably, the extradition hearing took only a few minutes of the judge's time. Gina had been all in favor of disavowing ownership of the sword and main gauche, but since they'd been taken off of him in the presence of several police officers and plain clothes detectives, Methos saw no reason to quibble over the obvious.   
  


"Your honor," Gina said, "my client is a bona fide collector of ancient armaments. He holds a doctorate in history--"   
  


"Then he should know better than to transport dangerous weapons--antiques or not--across national boundaries, Counselor. We tend to frown on such things."   
  


"He was carrying them for the express purpose of showing them to a friend he believed to be in the Galapagos, your honor, a fellow collector--"   
  


"Duncan MacLeod," Methos said.   
  


Gina shot him a dirty look. "A Mr. Duncan MacLeod, your honor, a well known antique dealer--"   
  


"Regardless," the judge said. "Since there appears to be substantial material and circumstantial evidence placing your client in Rio de Janeiro on the date in question, and since the glove found at the murder scene appears to be his, I'm approving the extradition. We'll let the authorities in Rio sort everything out. Has the forensics examination been completed on the sword?"   
  


"Since we anticipated your honor consenting to extradition no forensics exam was conducted--"   
  


The judge was nodding. "Yes, yes, I understand." Translation: It's someone else's mess, so let them pay for the tests involved. "Senor Pierson, you are now officially in the custody of the Brazilian authorities. Detectives--"   
  


"Here, your honor," they chorused.   
  


"I assume you'll need some part of the day to arrange transport. Senor Pierson will be detained by us until you are ready to depart, at which time you may sign for the prisoner. You will, of course, inform his attorney of your destination, and of a time suitable for her to meet with her client once you arrive in Rio."   
  


"Yes, your honor."   
  


"Thank you, your honor."   
  


Methos smiled, concealing it behind one hand as he rose.   
  


"Oh, shut up," Gina muttered. She glanced over her shoulder; predictably, courteously, Delmar and Basilio were hanging back on the opposite side of the aisle, allowing her a moment more with her client before they took him into custody. "For your information, we just lost."   
  


"Of course we just lost," Methos said. "We both knew we were going to lose. It was a given."   
  


"And we're going to lose on the forensics, too, aren't we?" she snapped in an annoyed whisper.   
  


He nodded calmly. "Given the most recent advances in spectrography, I'd have to say yes. We are most definitely going to lose on forensics."   
  


"So, now what?" she asked.   
  


"When the game is over," he said, "the gracious thing to do is to concede your loss and move on."   
  


"Senorita--"   
  


It was Detective Delmar, signaling her that time was up. She nodded, indicating she'd heard him, and frowned at Adam. Delmar and Basilio took the few steps across the aisle toward them, Basilio reaching beneath his suit coat and toward the small of his back for his handcuffs. In the second or two it took him to locate them by touch, the holstered 9mm clipped to his belt was also exposed, and Methos threw himself toward it.   
  


"Adam!" Gina screamed. "Don't!"   
  


In the same instant, Delmar had drawn his own handgun and was leveling it. Before he could be sure of his target, though, there were three shots, and then, as Adam Pierson crumpled to the floor of the courtroom, three more as Pierson squeezed the 9mm's trigger again. There was a chilled second of stunned silence as Delmar and Basilio exchanged looks, confirming that neither had been hit. Pierson had emptied five shots into himself--two to the chest and three to the gut. His face grim, Basilio kicked the 9mm away from the body as Gina sank to her knees beside Pierson, clutching at one hand.   
  


"Daddy," she whispered, but he was dead already.   
  


Pursing his lips together, Delmar shook his head in disbelief.   


**Chapter Thirty-six**

**October 1999**

He remained on deck despite the wind and rain that wrapped round Absolution, glad, almost, that he didn't have a barometer. In a way, it would have been too much to watch the falling glass and have to acknowledge the worst: This way, he could at least minimize the unmistakable symptoms of the weather and hope his fears were ungrounded until they could no longer be denied.   
  


Days out from the nearest land and with the currents against him, there was nothing he could do. Neither wind nor wave would permit him to successfully move under sail and, since he didn't want to be caught with his sails up anyway, he'd resisted the urge to raise them again. Doused and in their stops, they were as impotent as he felt against the impending hurricane. With nothing else to do, he seated himself cross legged on top of the deck house and stared out at the horizon, watching and waiting.   
  


By late afternoon he was encountering a series of mean squalls, ever darkening skies, and a restless, tossing sea. Even hours later, though, there was still nothing definite so he went below for a hurried meal--cold lima beans and ham eaten straight from one of the cans the captain of the Roldana had left him. In fact, he wouldn't have appreciated it if it had been a lavish banquet: All that was important was to feed his immediate need and, that done, return topside where he could watch in dread as his fears to take shape. Rain poured heavily from the ragged, lowering clouds now, and a gale-force wind had set in, whipping the seas so they charged down around him, tossing Absolution high and then dropping her abruptly to into the water again.   
  


There was no more guesswork about the hurricane. Every instinct now told him he was about to have one dumped right in his lap. Grimly, he took his anchor below and stashed it in the forward compartment in a wooden box that had previously held canned goods. He made one last check of all his gear, though there was little enough he could do. There was, in fact, no such thing as being ready for a storm at sea, especially a hurricane. All he could do was to make sure he was as ready as he could be and hope for the best. One more trip topside and he rigged his make-shift storm sail, sheeted it flat, and crammed the staysail below. There was one last thing to be done--cinching the tiller down doubly secure. When that was finished, he stood uncertainly in the cockpit for a moment and then took his seat on top of the deckhouse again, one arm locked about the mast as he watched over the bows for what was coming.   
  


MacLeod. Look up, MacLeod.   
  


Gray saw-toothed clouds raced past barely above the mast top, unburdening their torrents of stinging, cold water on top of him. The wind had steadied in the north and the fact that it hadn't changed direction in the past hour or more was troubling. Night closed in and heavy rollers, growling a flashing gray, were the only indication that the night was anything but wind and rain. With nothing else to be done, he went below at last, closing the sliding door to the cabin, and toweled down. Cold to the bone, he considered changing clothes, but saw no sense in it. He'd no doubt be summoned on deck at least a time or two in the next few hours, and he'd be wet through again before he could turn around. Restless but with little choice, he wrapped himself in blankets and lay down at last, staring up at the overhead, the straps he'd rigged ready but not yet unnecessary.   
  


About an hour later there seemed to have been a change in things. Absolution began dancing nervously beneath him, and from her pitch he could tell she was no longer rising to the oncoming crests, but breaking into them, taking water over her bow. Instead of a quick roll before the more forceful of the waves, she made a sharp lurch to starboard, leaving her heeled over enough to toss him from the bunk. He'd have found himself face down on the floorboards if he hadn't gripped the sides of the bunk with one hand and snagged one of his stay straps with the other. As it was, he wound up with his feet on the floor and bent at the waist as if attempting a somersault. Having no reason to stay in bed, he righted himself, struggling to keep his feet under him, and snatched one of his two flashlights just long enough to check the time.   
  


It was just short of eight when he managed to wrestle the door open and peered into the night before climbing the short ladder to the deck. Hissing rollers worked with a heavy swish beneath the boat and then ran away, protesting in the blackness. The wind chased after them, howling and calling. For a bizarre moment Absolution lay still, almost as if she lay in the bottom of a trough; a moment later she seemed laboriously to be climbing a hill, and then to teeter on its top; she sank to the bottom again then, not quite pitching, but heaving with the effort.   
  


Absolution's bow was five points off the wind, which continued from the north. Abruptly, the port rail was under, and he grabbed the doorframe, holding on until the fitful boat righted itself. The windward bow was throwing spray high into the rigging and beating into the seas. The rain was heavier than ever now, making it impossible to look straight into the oncoming wind and rain. There were, he knew, three stages to a hurricane's path: At the moment, he was obviously headed into the hurricane, and all he could do was hold on. Later, he'd cross the hurricane's eye, which, at sea, would mean wind from a dozen directions at once and great rollers crashing into the small, crowded arena occupied by the Absolution. With any luck, toward morning or maybe before he'd enter the navigable tail end of the storm and be able to make his way out of it. Since all was as well as he could reasonably expect on deck at the moment, he ducked back in and closed the hatch, bracing himself, arms up against the low overhead, while he swept the light quickly over the still, airless interior. All seemed well for the moment, so he dropped back onto his bunk, wedging the flashlight between himself and the wall, and lashed himself in for--he hoped at least--a few hours of sleep.   
  


Sometime later, Absolution was slapped by the most severe bursts of wind and water yet. She heeled, rattling as if in an earthquake, and then yawed and pounded. MacLeod loosed the hitches across his chest and legs and peered once more into the thick weather. The reason for the boat's change in attitude was plain: His jury-rigged storm sail had failed to hold its own in the high winds and had been blown to loose ends. Unfortunately, it meant going back on deck, but he had to set the sea anchor--a homemade job, rigged while sailing from the Galapagos. He heaved it overboard, stringing it out on a hundred feet of line. After an uncertain moment, Absolution rounded up a bit despite the heavy, noisy water crashing over her gunwales.   
  


Below decks he lashed himself into his bunk again and lay listening to every creak and groan that reached him over the noise of the rumbling seas and the winds shrieking in the rigging. He could hear the churning water crashing onto the decks and then surging over them. He listened deepest when the heavier gusts struck, alert for any sound of structural damage to the boat, remembering the aging timbers he'd recently reseated and caulked with his own hands. After sleeping for almost a year with his senses cued to every sound and murmur, he knew the meaning of each sound all too well, including the creaking of the stressed out metal to stern; an image of the rudderpost flashed through his memory, and he remembered how it had previously been wrenched from its keel seat. It reminded him, unaccountably, of this morning's startled awakening, and the sharks, rubbing themselves against the hull; every sound, at the moment, seemed to carry a warning, making sleep an impossibility.   
  


About midnight he heard a quivering shriek he identified intuitively as the loose ends of a snapped shroud. It whined like something alive and wounded beyond bearing. Opening the hatch and peering out, he watched for a moment as huge combers surged to port and then back to starboard, whipped all the while by the wind. Growing harsher and harsher, the wind had the feel of a solid wall to it, driving rain and sea before it like with the force of a horizontal waterfall. Absolution was falling away on the waves, her mast describing a dizzying, ever-widening arc. With the heaviest gusts she heeled over at an angle severe enough to lay the mast nearly horizontal, lopping off the tops of the highest crests of the waves as they swam toward her.   
  


MacLeod shifted his feet quickly, grabbing onto the doorframe for support. Absolution was falling, pointed nose first down the backside of a wave that felt like a moving mountain. She plunged bow-on into the base of the next wave, submerging the forepeak, and quaked under the tons of greenish gray water that washed onto her decks. Pitching her bow out of the water to the keel, she sent a river full of rail-deep salt water cascading along the deck and pouring over the stern. If the deckhouse hadn't broken the river's course, MacLeod would have been swept helplessly into the sea, his only hope the new trail rope he'd secured to the stern while at Floreana.   
  


In the deep trough formed by the surrounding hills of water, the wind was unable to strike; it was abruptly, momentarily, eerily still, and Absolution righted herself. As she neared the curled peak on the climb up the next roller, she once more encountered the blast of wind, careening before it like a drunk. It was too much, and as she was struck by the thundering, wind-driven wave MacLeod lost his footing and cracked his forehead hard against the doorframe. It was enough to make him see his own little phosphorescing light show for a moment, and when he probed instinctively there was blood to go alone with the wet of rain. Absolution's bow dipped again, thrown back in the next instant as if she'd been dynamited, and the little boat yawed wildly under heavy seas, first boarding her, then weighing her down so that she wallowed clumsily, her lee rail now out of sight. Then she seemed to shake herself free of her load and come up yet again, reeling down the backside of another swell of water, with the broken forward shroud flailing all the while like a whiplash on the starboard side, signaling danger to the 35-foot mast.   
  


He grabbed his life jacket, buckling it on, and then secured a heavy line around his middle, making it fast to the handrail that wrapped around the deck house. He waited for a moment when the decks were water free and leaped clear of the hatchway, slammed it shut, and jumped into the windward waist. Immediately, it was obvious that the life jacket had been a mistake. Even flat on his face, the wind caught at him as if it would throw him bodily into the night, and the added bulk of the life jacket only made him a bigger target. The wind ripped into the loose folds of his shirt, filling it at the front, ripping away the buttons and then tearing it down the back and sides so it hung by tatters to him. The life jacket bounced and battered in the wind, giving the wind something to tug at when it took all he had just to cling to the deck. Standing, or even sitting, would be more than foolish--the word suicidal came to mind--and, when he looked into the wind for more than a second he could feel his eyes go instantly dry and depress as his hair whipped against his cheeks and forehead.   
  


Earlier in the day he had strung a life line above the rails from the bow to the shrouds and to the sternpost. Two more life lines lay strung on deck from the forward bit along each waist to the rudderpost. Each line had double knots tied in every two feet or so, and to these he clung each time a swirling sea charged along the deck.   
  


With fumbling fingers he tugged at straps and D-rings, loosening the life jacket; he had only to raise himself minutely for the wind to snag the bright orange jacket, flinging it against the deck house and pinning it there against a port hole. In the next second the wind shifted, whirlwind style, and the life jacket went spinning out of sight into the night sky, sucked away by the up draft. Pulling himself ahead a few feet at a time, MacLeod locked himself in place every foot or so. When the decks emptied themselves of the eddying water, and when--for a moment--he dared expose himself, he freed his waistline on the handrail, moved it forward a length, and slid up under it. It was torturously slow work, but it had to be unless he wanted to go swimming; in this way, a bit at a time, he worked his way to the starboard shrouds to examine the damaged member.   
  


Once at the mast, it was clear what had happened: The turnbuckle on the after shroud had worked loose. The shocks of the mast, reeling in a wide arc, had been absorbed by the forward, weaker shroud, and it had parted. The mast was held only by one shroud, and that wasn't as tight as it should have been since the turnbuckle had unscrewed itself in the constant buffeting of the wind. It couldn't sustain the load being placed on it for long, and with the waves rushing over the rails and the lashing of the wind, he was afraid it would jump completely out of its stepping.   
  


Feeling the deck timbers beneath him crawl, he tightened the turnbuckle as well as he could by hand, knowing it couldn't possibly be enough. The single shroud simply couldn't hold out alone, and if he lost the mast, he might just as well try swimming to Australia. It was, needless to say, not a pleasant alternative. There was only one thing he could think of to do: loosen the forestay at the stemhead and bend it to the chain plate as a makeshift shroud. God willing, it would hold until he could manage proper repairs in good weather.   
  


As the next heavy sea crashed around his shoulders and over him, MacLeod made ready to loosen his body line and fasten it a few feet ahead so he could snake his way gradually to the bow. Moving slowly and carefully across the open deck between sea washes, he shifted his line from one secure fastening to another. Scrambling from the mast to the bitt, though, was riskier still, since there was nothing to attach his waistline to at that point; if not for the life lines, he had to admit, he'd have been washed overboard more than once. Watching the overspilling seas, he counted silently to ten, saw his moment, and jumped. He made it, ignoring as best he could the growing, unhappy sea around and sometimes on top of him. He loosened the forestay as quickly as possible and, gripping it fiercely, slithered back to the shrouds a few inches at a time.   
  


He lay on his back on the windblown decks, working with only his hands and forearms in the wind, coughing and spitting when he accidentally took in a mouthful or lungful of salt water. He forced himself to take his time, to think over each job carefully before committing to it, and, when he'd finished, Absolution was bolstered by full shrouds and the decks, even fully awash, didn't seem so bad with the mast safely held. The job completed, he made the error of sitting up to catch his breath and check his work. An explosive burst of wind bent him nearly double, compressing him to a helpless angle. At the same time, a flurry of bubbling, surging water lifted him bodily and tumbled him into the deck house. Phosphorescence sparked again, and there was a thud and crack he could only identify by the pain.   
  


When he came to--unsure if he had blacked out or died, and unsure if it mattered which--he was upside down with the pull of the sea wrenching at him. Being upside down was unnerving enough, but the fact that he couldn't clearly identify what was happening to his body was worse. He seemed, almost, to be floating in air--although sometimes it was water--and then it clicked. He had fallen overboard, still attached to the Absolution by the line secured to his waist, but was being sucked out to sea by the hurricane. Absolution's rail dropped abruptly below him, and in a moment of crystal clarity he saw the rail rising toward him as he fell in some odd juxtaposition of logic and gravity. He slammed into the rail with bruising force, arms crossed instinctively over his face and head for whatever protection they might offer, and then a heavy sea dropped down on the little boat, too perpendicular to be climbed. Sure of several broken ribs at least, MacLeod watched the wave curl over, towering before him. Bizarrely, he seemed to have misplaced the boat momentarily. He found it again as he was slammed suddenly and bodily into it, seemingly by force of the wind, his arms and legs thrown about at will. Absolution lurched, wallowing, nearly foundering, and MacLeod was submerged again, finding himself hard against the hull one minute, then tossed out of the sea again and airborne, with a bird's eye view of all below him.   
  


Consciousness leaked away, his last memory that of choking down yet another drink of salt and sea before he was dragged under the water again. This time, it seemed, he stayed there for some time; long enough, at any rate, that eventually it no longer mattered to him.

*****************

Continued in Part 5


End file.
